Native Americans on social media are sharing immigration-themed meme pictures across the internet, protesting U.S. President Donald Trump's immigration policies.
President Donald Trump's "zero tolerance" immigration policy has separated nearly 2,000 youths from their parents since April, triggering outcry from many Native Americans who find parallels in their own history with the U.S. government.
Native Americans are no strangers to the break-up of families.
"Most [non-Native] Americans do not know their own history, partly because any history that was embarrassing was not taught in school," said Oglala Lakota journalist Tim Giago, editor of Native Sun News Today. "Native Americans were taken from their parents starting in the late 1800s and shipped to places like Carlisle, PA and Genoa, Neb. to Indian boarding schools. We are still suffering from the trauma it caused."
Fellow journalist Vi Waln, editor of the Lakota Times, expressed a sense of solidarity with those detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
"Many Indigenous people are praying for the [detained undocumented] children to be reunited with their families and for the United States to do the right thing," Waln said. "But we know from experience that this might not happen."
O.J. Semans, a Rosebud Sioux tribe member and executive director of South Dakota-based voting-rights group Four Directions, echoed Waln's comment, remembering another government policy which encouraged placement of Native American children in non-Native foster families.
"In the 1970s, we had 25 to 35 percent of tribal children ripped away from their families. It took until 1978 to get Congress to create a law, the Indian Child Welfare Act, to curtail the abductions," he said, predicting that the current policy of separating migrant and refugee children from their parents will leave lasting scars.
"The trauma of children being ripped away from their parents -- the only true love they have -- will haunt their dreams and memories till the day they die," Semans said.
President Donald Trump's "zero tolerance" immigration policy has separated nearly 2,000 youths from their parents since April, triggering outcry from many Native Americans who find parallels in their own history with the U.S. government.
Native Americans are no strangers to the break-up of families.
"Most [non-Native] Americans do not know their own history, partly because any history that was embarrassing was not taught in school," said Oglala Lakota journalist Tim Giago, editor of Native Sun News Today. "Native Americans were taken from their parents starting in the late 1800s and shipped to places like Carlisle, PA and Genoa, Neb. to Indian boarding schools. We are still suffering from the trauma it caused."
Fellow journalist Vi Waln, editor of the Lakota Times, expressed a sense of solidarity with those detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
"Many Indigenous people are praying for the [detained undocumented] children to be reunited with their families and for the United States to do the right thing," Waln said. "But we know from experience that this might not happen."
O.J. Semans, a Rosebud Sioux tribe member and executive director of South Dakota-based voting-rights group Four Directions, echoed Waln's comment, remembering another government policy which encouraged placement of Native American children in non-Native foster families.
"In the 1970s, we had 25 to 35 percent of tribal children ripped away from their families. It took until 1978 to get Congress to create a law, the Indian Child Welfare Act, to curtail the abductions," he said, predicting that the current policy of separating migrant and refugee children from their parents will leave lasting scars.
"The trauma of children being ripped away from their parents -- the only true love they have -- will haunt their dreams and memories till the day they die," Semans said.
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